The new portable classroom at Westlock Elementary School is on track to be open by the fall. The school's growing enrolment necessitated the new classroom.

Anna Katryan/WN

Grade 5 students will have a new classroom to learn in this September as a modular addition to the Westlock Elementary School should be ready to go soon.

The extra space was granted by to the school last June after a request was made to the Pembina Hills school division brass to accommodate the growing student population at Westlock Elementary.

“Our school has continually picked up between five to 10 students every year for the past 10 years,” WES principal Terry Anderson said.

WES, Busby School and Eleanor Hall in Clyde have all qualified for modular classrooms after reports showed all three needed more space.

As one extra classroom will help solve the immediate issues of growing enrolment, Anderson said he expects that more modular classrooms will be needed in the future.

As the 2011/2012 school year winds down, Anderson said the school was forced to come up with some creative alternatives to deal with the lack of space.

“We converted a conference and work area as a half-time classroom for the Grade 3 students. We used up all our space pretty well. We are hoping this modular will free up some more space,” he said.

Anderson said he was hoping the project would have been completed in December as promised, but he will settle for having it ready for the coming school year.

“If it would have been done in mid or end of January we could have potentially used it for this term,” he said.

The portable classroom was placed on the north side of the gym, alongside the bus loop, which will not block any playgrounds or pathways around the school.

As installing the modular is quite costly, division maintenance director Tracy Tyreman said that Alberta Education absorbed the cost for the addition to the school.

“To install the units it was $177,000, which doesn’t include building the classroom itself, which would be about $300,000. We don’t need to cover any of these costs, it’s all from the province,” he said.

Tyreman said there are only minor things left to complete on the project such as wiring and plumbing and anything needed to attach the modular to the school proper.

Comments

The Westlock News welcomes your opinions and comments. We do not allow personal attacks, offensive language or unsubstantiated allegations. We reserve the right to delete comments deemed inappropriate. We reserve the right to close the comments thread for stories that are deemed especially sensitive. For further information, please contact the editor or publisher.